May 2012
3 posts
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chartsnthings →
A (personal) blog of data sketches from the New York Times Graphics Department. Maintained by @KevinQ.
Examples of processes used to “visualize data”.
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In Defense of Corporations →
Corporations are people. Yeah, they really are. But not in the way someone else once meant it.
April 2012
11 posts
2 tags
The Future of Focus Groups: My Brain Knows What... →
Not me…my brain.
First free will disappears as we learn more about the bran, now self-reported opinions are called into question as we learn to use what we know about the brain.
Plug me in.
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Content Strategy - Both Strategic and Tactical →
Whether managing living social media, or keeping sites fresh with blog-like efforts to engage, or even producing simple brochureware that’s expected to serve users’ information needs with minimal updates, it’s the content that lies at the core of success. The same way design (the role of which is to make one care about content) follows information architecture, information...
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11 Combinations You Can Make from the Coca-Cola... →
This one sounds good to me…
Super Cherry Coke: Cherry Coke Zero plus Cherry Sprite Zero adds a further cherry hit to the soda, for those who like that sort of thing.
“Past a certain age, the content of a life is at least as important as its...”
– Charlie Rose: Hitchens tribute « Why Evolution Is True
“In science, “fact” can only mean “confirmed to such a degree that it would be...”
– Stephen Jay Gould
(via scienceisbeauty)
Americans Deserve a Presidential Science Debate →
realcleverscience:
Numerous candidates have developed a pattern of embracing various antiscience positions from the denial of climate change to the assertion that stem cell research is “killing children,” in order to create controversy and reinvigorate sagging poll numbers. This is presumably based on the candidates’ belief that evangelical voters are antiscience.
This sort of brinksmanship...
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Mobile Link: Mobile First! →
Still a good case for “mobile first”, a year after the idea first got traction.
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Learning about Lean: The Orbits of PDCA →
An almost poetic observation on the cycle of improvement.
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March 2012
6 posts
The Magic of Doing One Thing at a Time →
From the link:
Multitasking in the business context means working on multiple tasks “at once.” Or as we know, having a big pile of work and being forced to SWITCH between them without ever getting them done. Throw on top of it the problem of interruptions and too-many-meetings, and you get a great ball of nothing-gets-done.
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Spring, 2012
White pink yellow blooms.
Pale green pollen dusts my car.
Colors spring to life.
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“I don’t have a problem with you making mistakes. Just try to make new...”
– overheard
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Innovation Is About Arguing, Not Brainstorming. →
2. SAY “NO, BECAUSE” It’s widely evangelized that successful brainstorms rely on acceptance of all ideas and judgment of none. Many refer to the cardinal rule of improv saying “Yes, AND”—for building on others’ ideas. As a former actor, I’m a major proponent of “Yes AND.”
But I’m also a fan of “no, BECAUSE.” No is a critical part of our process, but if you’re going to say no, you better...
October 2011
1 post
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On Reporting Project Task Progress →
Percent complete is meaningless.
September 2011
3 posts
1 tag
“We are here because one odd group of fishes had a peculiar fin anatomy that...”
– Stephen J. Gould, interview, Life (December 1988).
Actually, why we’re here is to take care of each other. There’s no one else to do it.
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“Really I don’t know anything other than Jersey. I like the dirtiness of it. Now...”
– Frank Iero (via everything-frank-iero)
August 2011
5 posts
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Why Share? →
A great summary of why we socially share, beyond the obvious keeping in touch with people who have passed through your life.
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How will Google Plus will end up fitting in my web... →
Why there’s been a slacking of content here in my Tumblr blog.
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A Great Educational Program →
Hey folks - if your kids are between 5th grade and 12th, pass this along to their teachers. I used to be involved in running this program and it’s truly a great experience that will take your kids around the world (virtually). [Would it be inappropriate for me to hope that a lot of people share this?]
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Marketing Link: The Digital Marketer's Checklist →
A discussion of the things that should be taken into account in designing a digital marketing effort… What is the objective of the campaign?
What digital measures align with the objective?
What efforts outside of digital can we align with?
What role should innovation play in this effort?
How can we be smarter in this effort versus previous efforts?
Go read the whole thing…The...
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PM Link: A Daily Project Execution Plan →
The piece I’ve linked to today offers up a framework for focusing project communications on immediate tasks at hand. The author - Atul Gaur - thinks of it as a “daily execution plan”, but it bears very close resemblence to what I like to do on a weekly basis. The nature of the big single-project work domain that he works in probably makes daily worthwhile, but in the...
July 2011
43 posts
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“The emergence of “Christian” terrorism in Europe does absolutely nothing to...”
– The Blog : Christian Terrorism and Islamophobia : Sam Harris
Commenting on the recent events in Norway.
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PM Link: The Client's Responsibility for Project... →
I’ve been known to suggest that the toughest resources to manage in a project are your boss and the project’s client. This link offers some thoughts about what it takes to maximize the latter’s contribution.
Bottom line…if you’re a project client, try to help the project team help you accomplish what you’re looking for from the project.
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PM Link: On Priorities →
Reblogged from idealgentleman:
A gentleman always knows what matters. He always knows what’s most important.
People talk about “priorities” and “priority lists”; they talk about “top ten priorities” and something being “a high priority”.
The truth is, you can only ever have one priority. Something is either your priority, or…[go read the rest]
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“Why do so many professionals say they are project managing, when what they are...”
– Colin Bentley, 1997
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Reading and Recommended
Reading and Recommended: With my new train commute, I’m re-discovering reading, thanks to the Kindle app on my iPad. Easing into it with two collections of short pieces: Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives (by David Eagleman) and Stories: All-New Tales (edited by Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrantonio).
Sum is a collection of very (very) short pieces describing possibilities for something no one...
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The Big Ideas podcast: The medium is the message →
A new podcast from The Guardian plans to offer up short analyses of “Big Ideas”. While I would have preferred more than 10 minutes on the prescient philosopher of media, Marshall McLuhan, what they do with those 10 minutes is excellent.
One bit I didn’t know was that the title of “The Medium is the Massage” was a typo that McLuhan liked and kept, conflating the...
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Management Link: "Why measure it if you are not... →
A good question (and answer) from Joe Ely.
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PM Link: Value of Project Managers →
A study reported in The Economist suggests that a case could be made for value in game software revenues that’s more attributable to project managers (producers in the game world) than designers.
…some 30% of differences in revenue between games could be attributed to the producer and the designer alone; and that the lion’s share of this variation was due to the producer. The boring...
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WatchEvocative remix of movies and music…
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“Being really busy is seductive – it has nothing to do with getting things done,...”
– Brad Feld
(reblogged from strangelypoignant)
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“Agencies, departments, and organizations don’t do things — people do things....”
– Edward Tufte
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Creativity Video: Why Man Creates
…from Saul Bass.
Part 1:
Part 2:
[via ze frank]
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Marketing Link: Feedback Loops →
What are They and Why are They Important for Marketing?
Whether or not we could articulate what feedback loops are and why they work, this trend of reflecting useful data back to customers was going to grow no matter what.
From the head of Zeus Jones.
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PM Links: Multi-project Management and...
Links to last month’s 4-part series…
Part 1 - Organizations are multi-project systems
Part 2 - Organizational effectiveness is resource effectiveness
Part 3 - Managing the present and the future
Part 4 - It’s what you finish; not how much you start
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“And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those...”
– (reblogged from emadness)
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Mobile Post: Writing for the Mobile Web - Less is...
The primary keys to successful mobile content are brevity and focus. As one wag has said, “it’s like writing for the web, only more so.”
The mobile reader/user is not sitting in the comfort of their home or office with the screen in front of them as their main focus. Their attention is often divided, and if you expect to get through the clutter of their surroundings, you must be prepared to edit...
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PM Post: Relay Race, Interrupted
Quite a while ago, back in my independent consulting days, a discussion list I participated in carried a thread about how to engrain and assure appropriate behaviors in management of a project organization. Around the same time, the following had come into my inbox from a different source, and for some reason I thought of that discussion…
There’s a story about an MIT student who...
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Management Link: 10 CEOs Who Became 'Job Killers' →
Linking to Neutron Jack in the slide show…
I can’t figure out for the life of my why CNBC has darn near beatified Jack Welch, while GE is just now coming out from under the impact of his “leadership”.
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